The Bible describes a mark, which will be key to a man’s physical existence in the near future as it has been in the past. But it also speaks of another, contrasting mark that is essential for our spiritual survival. How well do you understand the impact of these marks on you, personally? You need to know. It is a matter of life and death!
Another Mark
For many years, Herbert W. Armstrong clearly proved that the mysterious mark of the beast in Revelation 13 refers to this most prominent of signs: Sunday worship.
Revelation 6:11; 13:15-16 reveal that in the coming Great Tribulation, all who reject that mark and the associated worship of the beast, yet whom God does not protect in a place of safety, will be martyred.
Revelation 6:9-10 describes the commencement of the Great Tribulation (see also Matthew 24:21-22). It depicts martyrs of God who were killed because of the word of God and because of the testimony which they held. The word testimony can mean an outward sign. Many throughout history who kept the Word of God and this specific outward sign died because they refused to worship on any day other than the one God had instituted.
Revelation 6:11 shows that this same type of martyrdom is going to occur in the Tribulation. Those who are plunged into that suffering will be tested on their willingness to die for God’s truth, including the Sabbath. Those who pay with their physical lives will be given a wonderful reward beyond that. Those who receive the mark will come face to face with the wrath of God.
“Sunday was the first day of the week according to the Jewish method of reckoning,” the Catholic Encyclopedia admits, “but for Christians it began to take the place of the Jewish Sabbath … as the day set apart for the public and solemn worship of God. … [D]uring the first three centuries practice and tradition had consecrated the Sunday to the public worship of God by the hearing of the Mass and the resting from work. With the opening of the fourth century positive legislation, both ecclesiastical and civil, began to make these duties more definite.”
In the Ephesus era of God’s Church, Satan’s counterfeit church began to exert a strong influence on society. Practice and tradition were becoming more important than God’s law.
Then a new wave of satanic persecution surged during the Smyrna era of God’s Church, which held fast to God’s command (Revelation 2:8-11).
History proves that the persecution and tribulation revolved around the day of worship.
“Forasmuch, then, as it is no longer possible to bear with your pernicious errors, we give warning by this present statute that none of you henceforth presume to assemble yourselves together,” Emperor Constantine declared at the Council of Nicaea (a.d. 325). “We have directed, accordingly, that you be deprived of all the houses in which you are accustomed to hold your assemblies … forbid the holding of your superstitious and senseless meetings, not in public merely, but in any private house or place whatsoever. … [T]ake the far better course of entering the Catholic Church …. [W]e have commanded … that you be positively deprived of every gathering point for your superstitious meetings, I mean all the houses of prayer … and that these be made over without delay to the Catholic Church; that any other places be confiscated to the public service, and no facility whatever be left for any future gathering, in order that from this day forward none of your unlawful assemblies may presume to appear in any public or private place. Let this edict be made public” (Eusebius’s Life of Constantine).
It was Constantine’s goal to force everyone to join the Catholic Church. Those who refused were mercilessly slaughtered. Keeping the Sabbath made one a dissenter from the established religious dogma, and a target of full-force persecution that compelled Sabbath-keepers to flee into the mountains of Europe and Asia Minor.
At the close of the fourth century, and during the fifth, cooperation between the Roman church and empire intensified. The church of the empire determined who would be considered heretics. These heretics were portrayed as straying lambs, to be sought out
and, if recalcitrant, chastised with rods and frightened with threats, but not to be driven back to the fold by means of rack and sword, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia.
and, if recalcitrant, chastised with rods and frightened with threats, but not to be driven back to the fold by means of rack and sword, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia.
And so for the first five centuries, the ecclesiastical idea was that the church should not shed blood, but that the state could pronounce the death penalty on heretics in cases where the public welfare demanded it. The majority held that the death penalty for heresy, when not civilly criminal, was irreconcilable with the spirit of Christianity.
All this seemed righteous, but was it?
No comments:
Post a Comment